Hacker News Reader

Comment by kozukumi | Hacker News Reader

Just found out (the hard way) that content block extensions for Safari does not work on an iPhone 5c which sucks. According to Apple it is due to performance (the 5c uses the same SoC as the 5).

I can't help but think this is a massive failure on Apple's part as my daughter has a 5c as do most of her friends as they are/were the best (read: cheapest) option to get an iPhone. I would have loved to be able to load a content blocker on her phone to block adult content as well as ads.

They missed a trick there imho.

View on HN

Apple apparently restricted this due to performance limitations.

I have an iPhone 5, and found a way to get around this restriction by building a content blocker myself. It's pretty easy, just a list of JSON rules. You can use this project as an example: https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty

I am running my own content blocker on my iPhone 5, and it works nicely.

Note however, that webpages do seem to load slower than when a content blocker is not installed (this is why Apple limited it to 64-bit devices)

Content blocking requires an ARMv8 processor (so 5S and later) - must be a requirement of whatever they are using for regex.

Apparently it's a performance issue.

From apple[1]: Note: Apps containing content blocking extensions for Safari on iOS are available only on 64-bit devices, due to performance limitations of 32-bit devices.

    [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_9.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014305-CH9-SW9

Reply on news.ycombinator.com